Foster Adoption: On The Road (To Gay Daddyhood) Again!

Our last visit had our MAPP classes completed and if you remember in part three we were then jumping through hoops and hoping to check things off that great big list that the state requires for all families hoping to become licensed and to be placed with a child.

I wrote that last installment in October of 2014.
We are now in February, nearly March of 2015 and we are still waiting to be licensed.

Yes, friends, we are still waiting with the patience of Ghandi.

Now this is where you can say, “well, you get what you pay for, right?”

I mentioned in previous segments the cost that we could have incurred had we gone with a private adoption agency or with a surrogate.
Neither was within our budget and we still believe that adopting our next child via foster-care will prove successful and is completely inline with our family values and our needs.

Private adoptions may be quicker but nothing comes without risks.

You’re probably wondering what has been going on since October right?
I mean, we were so close to being done.

Well bureaucracy is what has been going on.

Set backs, and quite a few of them.
Each small on their own yet when combined, continue to set the clock back.

Example one.
We all need medical clearances completed by our doctors.
These clearances simply state that we are healthy enough to take on the role of parent.
We completed them in a timely manner and submitted them to our case worker.
Months went by, I literally mean months, when we were notified that the facility that completed my husband’s clearance (a walk-in type medical office) was not on the state’s approved list.

It needed to be re-done.

I know, maybe have the list of approved types of facilities at hand when requesting the clearance right?

Example two.
Back to those clearances, our son’s pediatrician neglected to put his height and weight on his form.
Yes, our three-and-a-half- year-old son also needs to be medically cleared.
Now having a state office fax the doctor to have those two tiny details filled in can take weeks, throw in a winter storm or a case worker that forgot it was Friday and you can be looking at a month.

These sorts of issues and delays are not uncommon when working within the foster-care system and you really have to go all Ghandi on them and go with the flow, breathe, surrender to the process and just keep smiling.

Everything in our files is also extremely time sensitive so as you can imagine as time roles on some things need to be re-done because they have expired.
Criminal checks are only good for so long.
Bank statements need to be resubmitted.
Your three year old may have grown an inch or gained a pound.
The list is endless.

So where are we now?
Tomorrow, Sunday, our case worker is coming over for us to sign the “final” documents, again.
Our file will then be submitted for final State approval, again.
And we will finally be able to dust off the furniture in our new child’s room, the room we had to have furnish months and months ago.

I am indeed hopeful that the third time will be the charm and that by the time we speak again we will have a real license in one hand and hopefully some tiny fingers wrapped around the other.
Wish us luck!

Comments

If they only cared enough to do this with all parents, how many of us would have been allowed to have kids. So ridiculous when you read the stories about how awful some foster parents end up being, prosecuted for abuse. Goodness moves slowly for the right people and let many bad people slip through. Don’t ever quite understand the process. Hope the signing went well.